Money Talking

Today, The Federal Reserve, America's central bank, is an object of national obsession, at least for anyone wondering — or worrying — about the economy.  After the financial meltdown in 2008, the Fed bailed out banks when they were in trouble and then lowered interest rates to nearly zero to jumpstart economic growth.

Now that the crisis is over, the (unending) question is, "When will the bank raise interest rates?"

But the steps the bank took to bail out the economy have also drawn criticism, especially from those who think the Fed is overstepping what it can or should do.

In many cases, they're complaints that have been lobbed at the Fed since its creation more than a hundred years ago.

Roger Lowenstein has followed the Federal Reserve for years as a financial reporter who has written for the The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Fortune. In his latest book, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve he explains how the arguments today about the financial system and the Federal Reserve echo the same ones that were made when the bank was created in 1913.

Listen to Lowenstein take Money Talking host Charlie Herman back in time to the days when supporters of the national bank were a daring minority, fighting an epic battle for greater financial stability and uniformity.

Dorie Clark is an author, a marketing strategy consultant, and a business professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. People listen to her.

But when she entered the workforce at the age of 20 after completing a B.A. and graduate degree, she found it challenging at times for her ideas to be heard, especially with colleagues who had many more years of experience.

Understanding what it’s like to be pushed aside even when you know what you’re talking about, she came up with ways to get people to listen which she outlined in an article for the Harvard Business Review: "Get People to Listen to You When You're Not Seen as an Expert."

"If you look different than other people in the workplace," she said, "maybe you’re the one woman in a tech company or something like that, people’s biases may be toward not taking you quite as seriously as other people, and so if you want to be heard, period, you may need to exert some strategy."

1. Create an echo chamber: If you're facing one roadblock to being heard from your boss, try befriending other people in the office who your boss respects. They can vouch for you in meetings and show your boss you should be taken seriously. In politics, they call it "powermapping."

2. Begin to position yourself as an expert. Start creating content around the subject you want to master. Blog about it. If you're learning, take readers along on your journey on the topic.

3. Borrow from the experts. Research and read widely and cite the experts you're learning from. 

4. Find common ground. When you're trying to convince your coworkers to take you seriously, try to bond with them as best you can. People are more likely to root for you if they feel like they're on your team.

Dorie said there's no substitute for doing real work to educate yourself – her advice is for informed people with good ideas.

"These strategies can be used for good or ill," she said, but in the Internet age, you have to know what you are talking about. If you're a phony, someone will probably find out.

Some things have an uncanny ability to take us back to simpler times: record players, typewriters, certain fine pastries, perhaps.

While Proust had his madeleine, all of France has U.S. credit cards. That’s because France, and pretty much the rest of the world’s major economies, has been ahead of U.S. payment technology for decades. This month, we are finally starting to give up our vintage credit cards with only the black, magnetic stripe on the back — the equivalent of a cassette or an 8-track tape — and switching to the “chip card." You may have gotten one in the mail already: they’re the new credit cards with a shiny computer chip on the front.

Also known as "EMV" — short for Europay, Mastercard and Visa, the three companies that created a standard for the chip in the early 90s — the chip card virtually eliminates the possibility of counterfeit card fraud. That's where crooks make a copy of your card, and it’s a kind of fraud that's been consistently growing in one place: the United States. 

Listen to Money Talking producer Julia Longoria as she went to find out what's taken us so long to get on board.

Beer giant AB InBev wants to acquire its rival SABMiller. It's one of many billion dollar deals this year. At this rate, we'll set an all-time record in 2015. Is that good?

Job interviews can make for some of the most awkward interactions humanly possible.

"It’s such a false scenario, right? Interviewing’s weird," said Patty McCord, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix and contributor to the Harvard Business Review. "But you want to get the chance to have an authentic conversation with somebody."

If hiring managers don't know what they're doing, the process can be especially painful for applicants, and in the end, disastrous for companies. And McCord says, most large organizations don't do it well.

"Their objective is to put butts in seats instead of build teams," she said.

During the 14 years McCord worked at Netflix, it developed a reputation for its treatment of employees and its ability to identify talent. It's famous for the 127-slide "Netflix Culture" presentation. Now, McCord consults with companies about the best way to identify and maintain great teams. The key, she says, is to treat the process less like a science and more like an art.

"It's a little like painting," she says. "The finished result is because it’s all in the prep." McCord says there are some basic steps to bring discipline and professionalism to the the hiring process:

McCord says in Silicon Valley, questions looking for a "good fit" about pleasantries like favorite movies or favorite bars lead hiring managers to look for people "just like me." Instead, Patty says the goal is to find questions that will make applicants stop and think — and go from there. For instance, instead of asking what their career goals are, ask "What do you not want to do anymore?" 

Listen to host Charlie Herman probe McCord for her strategies for interviewing and suggestions for the ways companies in Silicon Valley might make their hiring practices more inclusive.

Should the world of U.S. college sports operate like the free market?

Some players say yes.

The NCAA policy of preserving "amateurism" means players aren't paid like professional players are. They're students first. That policy has let the NCAA limit how student athletes are compensated, usually for expenses like the cost of attendance. The association argues that paying college athletes would create heated competition among universities for top players and distract them from their primary goal: getting an education. But some players say they work the equivalent of full-time jobs for the NCAA, and they want to be able to unionize and fight for better wages and better treatment.

This legal battle is ongoing. Last week, a court handed a somewhat mixed victory to the NCAA. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the way the NCAA limits athletes' pay to the cost of tuition is appropriate. Still, the court did insist the N.C.A.A. is not above antitrust law, thereby uphold a ruling from last year which scolded the NCAA for conspiring with schools to keep players from getting revenues from TV contracts.

Money Talking host Charlie Herman looks into the ongoing legal battle and the grey area where players find themselves with guests Joe Nocera from the New York Times and Allison Schrager from Quartz.

Which comes first: the gentrification or the Whole Foods? 

The high-end grocery chain has a reputation for slipping into developing neighborhoods just before the surrounding property values skyrocket. That's made them an important symbol for some struggling neighborhoods: when Whole Foods arrives, it's a sign those places have made it. Others say when the pricey chain touches down on their block, it's a harbinger of harmful gentrification and a rising cost of living.

But it seems Whole Foods has been having a rough year. The company has had pricing scandals, falling stock prices and this week it announced it's firing 1500 employees in order to lower prices. It's also announced a new spin-off chain, "365 by Whole Foods Market," aimed at a younger, more budget-conscious customer. Some Los Angeles residents near the site of the first 365 location say they want the "real thing" instead.

Hear guest host Ilya Marritz talk grocery-store strategy with guests Heather Landy from Quartz and Helaine Olen from Slate. 

And later in the show, Landy and Olen, who's the author of Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry, weigh in on Sen. Elizabeth Warren's attack on the financial industry this week.

Warren, who's made a name for herself as the conscience of the financial industry, says corporations are secretly influencing Congress by paying experts who testify. This week, an expert with the Brookings Institution stepped down after Warren pointed out that a paper he submitted to the Senate was funded by the mutual fund manager The Capital Group. 

Amy Gallo of the Harvard Business Review gets it: writing your resume is the worst.

It's painstaking to reduce yourself to bullet points and then to get the formatting just right. And then when you're done, hitting "Send" on a cold job application often feels totally futile. In an age when resumes are easily uploaded online, the hunt for jobs seems more competitive — and discouraging — than ever.

But Gallo says you need to pay attention to the way new technology changes the resume game. As she explains in her article for the Harvard Business Review, in an age when employers are often reading your resumes in PDF on a screen, the rules are different.

Gallo says there's one old rule you can definitely drop in the digital age:

But Gallo says there's some conventional wisdom that's timeless:

At its core, a resume should be more than a list of your responsibilities.

"A resume is really a marketing document," said Gallo, "I think people, unfortunately, often think of it as a record of their work life — which it's not. You have to think of the hiring manager as the consumer, as your customer, and you're trying to sell yourself."

For more insights, listen to Gallo tear apart Money Talking host Charlie Herman's resume. (And he thought he had a good one.)

*Special thanks to Rebecca Ungarino for production help.

It’s been a quite a week for corporations sparking outrage among consumers

A scandal at Volkswagen over how the automaker rigged emissions inspections in the U.S. cost the CEO his job.

And accusations of price-gouging after a drug company raised the price of a 62-year-old drug by more than 5,000 percent led the CEO to announce he’d lower the price, but he didn't say by how much.

This week on Money Talking, Rana Foroohar with Time Magazine and Ben White with Politico review what could be the consequences of these scandals.

And then, Pope Francis visits the U.S., meets the President, addresses Congress, and then gives a mass at Madison Square Garden. What does he hope to accomplish during his trip?

Author Gerald Posner has been investigating the Vatican Bank for years and says every time we get a new pope, we hear more or less the same story: claims of wanting to reform the church's finances.

But Pope Francis, Posner says, is for real.

In advance of the pontiff's trip to New York City, Money Talking host Charlie Herman talks with Posner about his book God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican, and how Francis is trying to reform the institution that has operated like an "offshore bank in the heart of Rome." 

And then, considering that New York City is a center of wealth and power, how will this pope balance the need to raise from money wealthy New Yorkers with his mission to make a church that is "poor and for the poor."